African-American and gay, Derrick has always struggled with the fact that he doesn’t put his mother on a pedestal. Quite the opposite, he doesn’t feel safe around her. He opens up about her mental illness, her sexualizing him at an early age and the effect it has had on him and his sexuality, including sex addiction and attending a support group. Derrick is mail carrier and lives in Southern California.
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Mental Illness Happy Hour Episode 73 with Derrick Jackson
PG: Welcome to episode 73 with my guest Derrick Jackson. I’m Paul Gilmartin, this is The Mental Illness Happy Hour. An hour of honesty about the battles in our heads. From medically diagnosed conditions to everyday compulsive negative thinking. This show is not meant to be a substitution for professional mental counseling, it’s not a doctor’s office, more of a waiting room that hopefully doesn’t suck. I like that guy, let’s get more of him on the show. The website for the show is mentalpod.com and there’s all kinds of stuff there. There’s a survey that you can take, there’s actually four different surveys that you can take. You can sign up for the newsletter, you can read blogs, you can join the forum. A lot of people on the forum. That’s a great way if you’re not currently in therapy or in support groups, it’s a really great way to kind of dip your toe in the support group, I don’t know, pool? Oh God, fuckin’ minute in and I’m hating myself already. So yeah, go to mentalpod.com and check all of that stuff out. Interesting week! My ego took a little bit of a— A little shot to the nuts. I have this fear that somebody’s going to want to hire me for a job and they’re going go to Wikipedia to learn about me and they’re going to see that I don’t have a Wikipedia page and they’re going to think ‘well then, this guy really isn’t in show business, so I’m not going to hire him.’ Because whenever I have a guest on the show who’s fairly high profile or done stuff on TV, I always go to their Wikipedia page to see what they’ve done so I can give them a nice intro. And so I’ve just over the last year or so I’ve been like ‘gosh, I’ve gotta have a Wikipedia page’. So when I was on Facebook I mentioned that I’m a little embarrassed that I want to have one, that I feel that I need to have one and I’m embarrassed to ask somebody to— because you’re not supposed to create your own Wikipedia page, people are supposed to do it for you. So I just kind of put the feelers out there and somebody said ‘Yeah, let me— I’ll go check into it’. A lovely listener took it upon herself to go check that out. She’s currently trying to get a page accepted and she got an email back from somebody at Wikipedia that said the entertainer— I did a little bit of research and the entertainer you speak of has not done anything notable enough to warrant a Wikipedia page. I— Three quarters of me can laugh at that and know that it’s so not— It’s such a fucking first world problem to have. But a quarter of me is just leveled by that. I don’t know, I just thought I’d share that with you guys. I’m going to kick things off with a couple of surveys. This is from the Shame and Secrets survey. And this first one is from a guy who calls himself Teddy Ruxpin. He’s straight, he’s in his 30’s, he’s was raised in an environment that was a little dysfunctional. To the question “Have you ever been a victim of sexual abuse” he writes “some stuff happened but I don’t know if it counts as sexual abuse. I was living with a female friend at the time. One night she and a few friends came home late from the bar drunk, while I was asleep. I woke up to one of the friends coming in to my room and saying that she needed to sleep near someone, so she didn’t want to sleep in the living room. She lay down on the floor at first, but then soon got into my bed saying she’d rather sleep with me. I was not attracted to this woman and was annoyed at being woken after being asleep for hours. I urged her to get out of my room and tried to argue convincingly why she did not need to be there. Once she was in my bed she began touching me and kissing my face and neck. I did not respond with any sexual gestures of my own towards her, but when I became erect she got on top of me and we began having unprotected sex. Again, I urged her to stop, especially since we didn’t have a condom but she kept going. It went on for a few minutes before I really insisted on ending it. Ultimately, I did not like it or want it and I probably could have been more forceful in denying her, but there was some sense in which I did enjoy it.” And that’s the end, he didn’t write anymore after that. But I found that to be really interesting because that is kind of abusive. Does that— Am I exaggerating? Am I crazy there? Yeah, sure he got an erection but she didn’t take no for an answer. He wasn’t doing anything to let her know there was a mutual interest. I know there’s sometimes a persistence when two people are getting together, but I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been her, with the situations reversed. I don’t know, it’s just weird seeing that as a woman. With the roles reversed wondering can it still have that same violation feel to it. I don’t know, I thought that was interesting. This next survey is from a woman who calls herself Sister Ginger. Actually she’s a girl, she’s 17, bisexual, pan-sexual, she writes also. She was raised in an environment that was pretty dysfunctional. “Have you ever been the victim of sexual abuse?” she writes “some stuff happened but I don’t know if it counts as sexual abuse.” She writes “I feel as though what happened to me isn’t as severe as other things so it shouldn’t count. From what I can remember, my uncle who used to live with us,” I don’t like it right away. I don’t like any “it might count as sexual abuse…uncle”. That’s just all bad. Uncle comes through the door, nothing good happens. I shouldn’t say that, I’m an uncle, I’m a pretty good uncle. Ok, she writes “my uncle used to live with us and sleep on the floor in my room.” See? What did I tell you? “And he would reach into my underwear and rub me when he thought I was asleep. It only happened twice.” Look already at how she’s already minimizing it, “it only happened twice”. You know, Ginger, if it happened once, that’s enough. “It only happened twice and when my mother asked me if he had touched me, I said yes. But looking back I didn’t know that she was asking if he’d fucked me or not so I felt guilty for confessing to something that didn’t actually happen.” But something did happen! That’s, you know this isn’t like your uncle elbowed you too hard at a barbeque. He reached into your underwear and you were a child. Ugh. “What are your deepest, darkest thoughts?” she writes, “I think about killing myself, killing others.” By the way, most people that are the victims of sexual violation have suicidal thoughts and my two cents on that is I think we’ve had our sense of safety taken away from us and there’s, maybe, this sense of impending doom that it’s going to happen again and we just can’t take the waiting for that to happen. I don’t know, that’s my two cents on that. “I think about killing myself, killing others, and I’m ashamed of myself that often times I don’t feel bad about thinking these thoughts. Another thing I think about is my father dying and me not crying about it at all.” It would be interesting to know what her relationship is like with her parents. “What are your most powerful fantasies?” she writes, “I’ve had fantasies about being completely dominated and fucked really hard. But I think the most powerful ones are the ones where I’m taken into an alleyway by a stranger and raped. I don’t know why it turns me on but it sickens me that it does.” I’ve said this a thousand times, do not feel bad about the thoughts that are in your head about what turns you on. We have no control over them and it’s not hurting anybody. “Would you ever consider telling a partner or close friend your fantasies?” she writes, “I’d like to say I wouldn’t simply because I’m ashamed of it and I feel like they would judge me but it will come out sooner or later.” I think that would be healthy to share that with your future boyfriend or girlfriend. “Deepest, Darkest Secret?” she writes, “I borrowed my mother’s vibrator before to masturbate. I cleaned it off both before and after I used it but the idea of it is still pretty gross.” I can see how that would make you feel weird, but my god, if you put together all of the things teenagers do when their hormones are raging— Fuck, teenagers? Adults in general! That’s nothing, so, you washed it off, cut yourself some slack. I know there are people now “Why do you have to read this?” Because I find it interesting. “Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feelings toward yourself?” she writes, “I feel like at this age I shouldn’t think this much about sex, even with all these hormones. And even if I did, it shouldn’t be this gross and violent and gruesome.” Well Ginger, welcome to the real world. Welcome to how many of us think and feel. And you are not alone in that and you are not a freak and there is nothing wrong with what you thing and you feel. But I would suggest getting some counseling or therapy to deal with that stuff that happened with your uncle because that is not a minor thing, that is a violation. I am going to wrap it up before we get into the conversation with Derek Jackson who is a listener. And this is a survey that I had started called Struggle in a Sentence where I ask people to try to describe whatever their struggle is in a sentence and for depression I’m going to read some of the responses. “It feels like a dark cloud of dread constantly following me until I want to scream.” “Sad, lonely, dark heaviness in my heart like it’s the end of the world and life sucks.” “A soul full of rotting bricks.” “A total disconnect, like I’m watching this train wreck from afar”. “Chronic depression? Like waking up next to someone you don’t love every morning and wondering when you’re going to get around to finally getting that divorce.”
(Intro plays)
PG: I’m here with Derrick Jackson who is a listener. Who I got an email from maybe eight or nine months ago?
DJ: No, more like three.
PG: Three months ago? We were supposed to record about two months ago and I had a little bit of a meltdown over some mom issues and when you emailed me you had talked about a lot of the mom issues stuff that you had and I had to cancel our recording because it was— I just couldn’t do it at that point in time and thank you for being understanding and for pushing our recording date back. I related a lot to the stuff you talked about with your mom in your email. I’m not really sure where the best place is to begin. What do you— Well, let me tell our listeners up front, Derek is African American, he’s gay. When did you know that you were gay?
DJ: Um…
PG: And you’re a postal carrier.
DJ: Yeah, I’m a postal carrier. I probably knew I was gay maybe, I don’t know… My whole childhood I knew I was different I just didn’t have a word for it. I put all the pieces together maybe 11 or 12.
PG: Ok, can you describe your home life? What was it like?
DJ: Sure, um…
PG: Where were you raised?
DJ: I grew up in Englewood, California. I was— my mom was a single mom and I never knew my dad and I was mostly raised by my grandmother who lived not too far from my mom. So it was kind of like my grandmother was my primary parent and my mom was the divorced dad that I would visit.
PG: So why did you live mostly with your grandmother instead of your mom?
DJ: Because my mother just couldn’t get her stuff together. I guess she wasn’t really prepared to have a child.
PG: how old was she when she had you?
DJ: She was 21, which isn’t that young, but it’s not old either. She drank a lot and was kind of a party girl and she would take me to visit my grandmother and whenever my mom would come to pick me up I would cry because I didn’t want to go back with her. So I think eventually my grandmother just said, “Why don’t you let me keep him?” and my mother said ok. So that’s how I came to be raised mostly by my grandmother but my mother was still in my life a lot.
PG: What was it about your grandmother that you felt— did you feel safe around your grandmother? Or safe compared to with your mother?
DJ: I felt safe with my grandmother. Well, compared to my mother definitely, but just safe in general. I wouldn’t say that my grandmother was nurturing really, but it seemed she could provide me with a better life than my mother could.
PG: There was some stability there.
DJ: Yeah, there was definitely stability that I was not having with my mom.
PG: Could you talk about— well, obviously I know you’re going to talk about it because it was the bulk of your email to me but describe your relationship with your mom as a child.
DJ: Ok, where do I begin with this one? Well, as I said, I just never really felt safe. And what inspired me to write to you was that episode you did about sexually inappropriate parents. And I related a lot to what your guests were talking about. God, this is weird.
PG: It’s hard, I know and I appreciate you coming on to talk about this stuff because it’s tough subject matter.
DJ: Yeah. Ok, but before I went to live with— when I did live with my mom— I went to live with my grandmother prior to first grade, whatever that age is, but before that I did live with my mom. I slept in a bed with my mom. Even though it was a two bedroom apartment and at a certain point I do remember having my own bedroom. But mostly, I slept in bed with my mom. And this is where everything is just hazy. I have all these weird, hazy, sexual memories of being in bed with my mom. I used to think I had sexually fantasies with my mom but now in hindsight I’m not sure if these were fantasies, I think these were things that were really happening. But again, I was two, three, four, five, I can’t pinpoint exactly what it was but whatever it was, it shouldn’t have been happening.
PG: Can you describe what some of them were or is it too painful to talk about?
DJ: it’s not that it’s too painful, it’s that it’s too hazy. But you know, my mom, she had a— She dated, you know, had more than a few boyfriends. And I also remembering being in bed with one of my mom’s boyfriends, one of my mom’s boyfriend being in bed with me with a full erection.
PG: he had a full erection.
DJ: He had a full erection.
PG: And, he— was he uncovered and had a full erection or was it an erection under the covers…?
DJ: He was uncovered and had a full erection.
PG: And was he saying something to you?
DJ: I don’t remember.
PG: Was your mom there?
DJ: No.
PG: Ok.
DJ: I don’t remember anything. I just remember that. And this is something that I thought about later, as I got a little older, like “oh yeah.” Because I just, you know, I didn’t know what an erection was at that time. But when I found out what an erection was I remembered, ‘oh yeah, Alex had an erection and he was in bed with me.’ So this was what my early life was like, you know. Before I went to live with my grandmother and— But then I went to live with my grandmother and my grandmother sent me to private, religious schools. So I’ve gone to Christian schools my whole life, something my mother would not have been able to provide me with. But I would still see my mom and it was, you know, kind of weird and I guess I would say I never really liked my mom. I never as I got older I just didn’t think the way she would behave around me was appropriate. She would frequently be naked in front of me, you know, and not be shy about it.
PG: And what age would you be when this would be happening?
DJ: eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve…. It kind of went on almost until recently. You know, even up until recently, I would come and visit her and her robe would accidentally fly open or something and she would say ‘oh, I’m sorry.’ So you know, it’s not— it’s always been like that.
PG: So it’s a pattern that— You know, if all you had had were these hazy memories and your mom was completely appropriate outside of that, then I would say, ‘well, it’s possible that this was just a creation of the mind’ but the fact that she was constantly exposing herself to you, that you don’t feel safe around her, that she let you be in bed with a guy when she wasn’t there. All of these things make the hazy memories make sense. And even if you didn’t have the hazy memories, that stuff is so incredibly damaging. How does that make you feel when you think back to these things that your— Were there other things before I ask you the next question?
DJ: well, yeah, I guess, sure. My mom would— As I got older, and we’re talking between the ages of 10 and 15, she would expose me— You know when I would go to visit her. Sometimes when my grandmother and I weren’t getting along I would go to stay with her for a longer period of time and she would— You know, she had pornography, not pornography but I guess, you know, like Hustler and Penthouse—
PG: That’s pornography.
DJ: Yeah. It wasn’t hardcore, but enough.
PG: Hustler is pretty—
DJ: Hustler is pretty hardcore. And she would look at these with me. Like, boyfriends of hers would give them to her and she would look at them with me. Let me look at it and...
PG: What would she say to you? Do you remember?
DJ: No, I don’t remember what she would say…
PG: She would bring them out and introduce them to you?
DJ: I mean, I was a kid, so I would naturally be curious. So I might pick it up but she would but she would just let me look at it. And I think it was maybe because she feared I was gay and letting me look at naked women might steer me in a different direction. Of course with Hustler there were men too and I was looking at the men. I was also fascinated by the women too. I would sometimes get aroused looking at the women. She would let me look at this and she would let me watch, I don’t know, back in the 80’s we had OnTV and Select TV and they had sort of these soft core porn things. It was very soft core and she would— she wouldn’t look at it with me but she would let me look at it. She would know I would be looking at it. So, just all of this stuff. A lot of things that were just not appropriate for me being a child to be around. So as a child I was really preoccupied with sex.
PG: How could you not be?
DJ: I guess. I went to an elementary school— The school that I went to was a conservative Lutheran school and I was always getting in trouble for being inappropriate and exposing myself to girls. I think I told you this in the email where I had checked out a book from the library about reproduction that was made for older children and the illustrations were pretty explicit and I made point of showing it to kindergartners and first graders just to see what they would think of it.
PG: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what you were doing.
DJ: Yeah, and I feel terrible. I really think that I wanted to rob these kids of their innocence the way that mine had been robbed. Although I didn’t know what I was doing at the time.
PG: Do you remember what you would feel when you would show those kids those pictures? Do you remember what— any emotions you would experience? Or what you would think when you were doing it?
DJ: no, I don’t.
PG: I’m just curious as to how conscious kids are when they repeat the stuff that was done to them.
DJ: I don’t want to believe that I was intentionally trying to harm them. But I got in trouble for it because one of them told the principal. So, I don’t know, I don’t remember what I was thinking. I don’t think I was really thinking. You know, it wasn’t like pornography but it was an illustration of a couple having intercourse that was meant for older kids. It was about reproduction and I went ‘I wonder what a kindergartner would think of this?’ And I once told a teacher, well not a teacher, but the lady who does the daycare that I was going to rape her. And I did not know what rape meant at the time, I just knew it was something sexual and I knew it was something I had no business saying to a teacher, but I did.
PG: The fact that a kid at that age would even partially know the concept of rape is kind of disturbing.
DJ: Well, I lived in a neighborhood— It wasn’t a great neighborhood, there were gangs and stuff and I heard adults talking about ‘a woman was raped last week down the street’ or something. And so I’d heard the term “rape” and I’d heard it on TV but no one ever explained it to me. I thought it meant sort of— Well, when the teacher that I said that to said, ‘do you know what “rape” means?’ I said “it means attack” and I knew it didn’t mean “attack”. I didn’t know exactly what it meant, so that’s what I said to her. So…
PG: Well, it does kind of mean attack…
DJ: yeah, it does, it does… There’s a lot more to it than that.
PG: It’s primarily an act of violence more than it’s an act of sex. So you’re this kid with all this pent up emotion, all this stuff being forced on you by your mom. What do you feel when you’re around your mom today? Do you see her much?
DJ: Wow. Well, Yeah. A lot has happened since the last time you and I talked. I haven’t spoken to my mom since the day before Mothers’ Day.
PG: We’re toward the end of July right now.
DJ: Yeah, and Mothers’ Day is May right? Yeah, so this is kind of— everything kind of came to a head in this conversation when— I’ve had relationships over the years and I’ve often brought my partners with me to Mothers’ Day and Christmas. Having people with me when I’m with my mom, it, you know, it acts as a buffer and I just feel safer.
PG: Boy do I get that! When my mom comes to visit, every 5 years I’ll let her come out and I just try so hard to get people to come out to dinner with us.
DJ: Right, exactly. So this year, Mothers’ Day in particular has always been the most dreaded holiday on the calendar for me. Because it’s the one day, the one time of year that I feel obligated to deal with my mom. Again, when I had a partner for eight years he might do his Mothers’ Day thing on a different day and then he’d come with me on my Mothers’ Day. But this year my best friend, who my mom like, he was originally going to do his Mothers’ Day thing on Sunday which is Mothers’ Day so he couldn’t come with me, but then he changed his plans so he did his Mothers’ Day think on Saturday so he was free to come with me to take my mom to brunch. So I called her up the day before Mothers’ Day just to let her know that my friend was going to be joining us and…
PG: And this is brunch at a strip club?
DJ: (laughing) Yeah! Exactly! A male strip club.
PG: It was Larry Flint’s brunch.
DJ: It was actually a place in Long beach near where my best friend lives. And when I told her this— Again, I’ve had friends, boyfriends, it’s nothing new, but she really resisted and got angry and said “no, I just wanted it to be me and you. I just wanted to be alone with my son” and she plays up the “you’re my only son and we’re all each other has” and that kind of thing. When I put forth boundaries and I sense her resisting the boundaries I just get really angry and the conversation kind of spiraled out of control and I ended up telling her that I bring people with me because I don’t feel safe with her.
PG: Good for you!
DJ: yeah.
PG: That’s awesome Derrick!
DJ: You think?
PG: Fuck yeah! Oh, you’re being sarcastic? Or you’re being serious…
DJ: No, I’m being serious. I want to believe it was a good thing, but then…
PG: Oh, it’s an awesome thing!
DJ: But then she wanted to know what I meant by that.
PG: Sure!
DJ: And, this whole thing about her inappropriateness with me, it’s come up before. It’s not like I haven’t said it before. She just sort of says I’m making it up and her big thing is ‘everybody lies on me’. She thinks everybody’s lying on her.
PG: Oh my god…
DJ: But she wanted to know. “What do you mean by that? What do you mean you don’t feel safe with me?” And I just kind of said “mom, I just don’t want to get into it.” And she pretty much dared me to say she molested me. I think she said something like ‘I know you’re not going to say I molested you!’ And I didn’t want to go there. As I remember from your call with your doctor Zucker, they’re never going to admit it anyway, so I was just not prepared to have this conversation even though I opened it up and… I started getting upset and— It’s funny, she’s usually the hysterical one and the one who’s getting angry but in this call she was just as calm as I’m talking to you now. She’s like “really, what are you talking about? No, tell me.”
PG: Like condescending towards you?
DJ: Yes, condescending. And I started to— I didn’t want to get to the root of not feeling safe but I started talking about how when my grandmother used to bring me to her house, how I would cry and I didn’t want to be with you, and I was screaming and then I was like ‘let’s forget it, let’s cancel Mothers’ Day’ and she didn’t want to let me off the phone and I just got so upset I screamed “fuck you!” and I hung up the phone. And I’ve never said “fuck you” to my mother ever.
PG: How did it feel to say “fuck you”?
DJ: It felt good (laughing). I feel terrible! It felt like it needed to be said…
PG: That’s an understatement Derrick!
DJ: An understatement. And then shortly afterwards, you know, like maybe an hour later she calls and leaves a voicemail saying “I will never, ever let anyone hurt me like this again. And until you apologize to me I have no son!” And this is nothing new, my mother has written “Dear John” letters to me before.
PG: What? What a fucking martyr!
DJ: “You hurt me! No one has ever hurt me like this before!” And that was it, I have not spoken to her since.
PG: And nothing about you Derrick. Absolutely no concern for what you might be going through. It is all about her. I’ve got a book for you to read, a listener gave it to me, it’s called Understanding the Borderline Mother and I don’t know if this helps you or not but in my opinion, your mother truly believes what she believes and that is at the heart of her sickness. And it’s one of the things— And again, I’m the jackass that tells dick jokes, so I’m not trying to be a fucking psychiatrist here, but, just going on what I’ve read about that type of person, it’s a sickness where they mis-remember things, or they can’t remember things and they can’t put themselves in your shoes. It is a sickness and once I understood that about my mom it made it easy for me to have some compassion and to forgive her and to not take it personally. To understand, this is not her trying to hurt me, she’s a sick person. And my hunch is that your mom is also like that. That she’s not trying to hurt you, she’s just…
DJ: No! She’s not! And the thing is she’s the first one to say— Whenever I’ve had any criticism of her and there’s been plenty, and I try to bring it up she will just say ‘you act like I’m trying to hurt you and I’m not trying to hurt you. You act like I’m the worst mother in the world!’ This is the kind of stuff she would say to me, just to shut me up. She doesn’t want to hear it. And I have never once said she was intentionally trying to hurt me and I say that to her. But she doesn’t hear that. Like if I have an issue with her then I’m calling her the worst mother in the world.
PG: And by the way, the type of borderline mother from this book is “the martyr”. That’s how they’re described. And that’s what my mom would do, she would lock herself in the bedroom and she would cry, but she would say things loud enough so that I could hear them on the other side of the door about how we were rotten, spoiled little bastards and she was going to leave us all. And it would be this manipulative attempt for me to come in and console her, which I would do. And it became all about her feelings. And I would do it! So I would completely ignore all my needs and it was all about “can I make my mom happy?” So I would let her violate my boundaries because I thought “otherwise she’s going to end up in the bedroom crying.”
DJ: Wow. I guess I’ve been different about my mom, that I will not console her. I guess this is where a lot of my guilt comes in, being this African American man that doesn’t like his mother and I’ve never acted like I do, I do my best to honor her, but I don’t comfort her, you know. I just let her do whatever she does and then I feel a terrible amount of guilt about it. But even that— I don’t even feel comfortable consoling her, I don’t feel comfortable—
PG: Do you feel like you should be consoling her?
DJ: Depends upon where I’m at. Depends upon where I’m at when I’m thinking about it. Right now, no. Listening to Dr. Zucker, no. But then there are times when I— No, I don’t. But then, I still— she’s my mom and I feel a lot of guilt that I don’t… Am I going to say I don’t love her? I don’t know. Even that feels weird.
PG: Do you feel that she loves you?
DJ: I have no idea. She says she loves me every five minutes.
PG: Take away what she says. When you look at her actions, are her actions toward you, on the whole, loving?
DJ: I would say no.
PG: ok.
DJ: She would say yes—
PG: Fuck what she says. Look at the actions of how a person treats you. And that to me is the ultimate question to ask. Forget about what they say and forget about what you’re supposed to feel— and by the way this is an excellent place for me to plug the survey that I’ve created on the website called “I shouldn’t feel this”. And it’s a way for people to dump feeling that they have about people, places, or things that are contrary to the way the think they should feel about things. And the breakthrough for me came when I opened that door to say ‘is it possible that what my mother is expressing to me, the way she’s treating me is not love?’ That doesn’t mean that she’s not trying in her sick way to love me but what am I getting from this? Is what I’m getting from this relationship, does it feel like love? And I had to say no, it feels like abuse. It feels like invasion.
DJ: Invasion, that’s a good word. I feel like if I have had to have such draconian boundaries because if I just let her in the door a crack she would swallow me whole.
PG: Oh my god! I relate to that so much! I’ve always said that my mom is like an octopus and I grab one arm and there’s seven more grabbing me. And they wear you down. And this is not, by the way, this is not a ‘let’s gang up on moms’ there are just as many fathers that do this, just as many co-workers, just as many people in a position of power that don’t realize that they are abusing that. I forgot what my point was… Oh! That they overwhelm you, that’s one of the tools that they use so that we cave in, is that they are willing to go the distance. And I think that’s part of what the sickness gives them is because when they violate a boundary I think they get a charge out of it and that energy allows them to keep doing it. And what we feel on the other side is we begin to shut down, our energy begins to sag. I mean, when you’re around your mom you just feel like you want to lay down, like you just want to take a nap?
DJ: I feel like a fetus. Like I don’t even exist when I’m around my mom. Usually when I bring someone over, and the thing is everybody else thinks my mom is— the word that is often used is “a character”, “oh, she’s a character!” they don’t really say that they like her, but they say she’s a “character” because she is funny and she’s a great cook. But usually when I’m around her I just blend into the wallpaper. And phone calls with her she does 99.999% of the talking and I just look for an out, to say I have to get back to work or whatever. And she’ll thank me for calling her to make me feel bad because I don’t call and then she’ll call me back to tell me something she forgot.
PG: Oh my god! My mom does that! Sometimes she’ll call back three times in a row and I won’t pick it up! And sometimes I have this fantasy of printing out the conversation and so that she can see that she talked for nine pages.
DJ: Right! And then occasionally as I’ve become healthier and have learned how to set boundaries and learned how to speak up, I’ve then sort of tried to talk and just— she asks “well, what’s going on with you?” and I will start to talk and then she’ll cut me off and start talking about whatever she wants to— or not—, she won’t change the subject but then she’ll finish my sentence for me and I’ll just “mom, you’re not listening to me and I’m not done” and she resisted but it was going pretty well for a while.
PG: Yeah, and that’s a point I really want to highlight here. Is that deep down, I think we don’t feel heard.
DJ: Yeah, right, exactly.
PG: They talk as if we’re being heard, as if we’re being loved. And sometimes they will lavish praise on us but their actions are so contrary and for the longest time I just listened to what my mom was saying even though I was feeling something different. And the breakthrough came for me in listening to how I was feeling and comparing it to her actions and her words and finally saying “wow, this is not love, what this woman is expressing to me, this is sickness. I am a vessel for her sickness.”
DJ: oh, that’s a good one. Yeah. Yeah. And I agree and my mom, she tells me she loves me all the time and I have no idea what that means. Like, and I’ve said this to her, the only reason she says it to me is because she wants me to say it back. And I say it sometimes and other times, I don’t. I’ll just say “ok, bye”. And then I feel terrible about it. I wish my mom’s life had been different. I wish she had had it easier but she didn’t and she’s not a very happy woman. She’s never been married. She’s never had a healthy relationship with a man. And she acts over-protective of me because I’m out in the real world living a real life. And she just lives in a little apartment, with shit everywhere. She’s a hoarder. And watches TV from sun-up till sundown. And that’s her life. And when she goes to the doctor. And it’s sad and when I go over there I get very sad just seeing her like that and I can’t wait to leave.
PG: Has she ever sought help?
DJ: She has and she’s actually been in mental institution before. I think she checked herself in, it wasn’t like she was committed. She’s had therapy. I remember when I was a teenage she had a psychiatrist but she also had a lot of drugs that the psychiatrist was giving her. And one day she gave me this great big bag of pills and told me to flush them all down the toilet. So I don’t know what she was— I don’t think it helped. You know, she would say she was just depressed, like that’s why she was going, for depression. But all of the weirdness between me and her and other family members, and her dad… I don’t know if she talked about it. I don’t know.
PG: I don’t think that there’s any chance in the world that she wasn’t molested.
DJ: I…
PG: Or something. Some sexually boundary violated.
DJ: I believe that you’re right. And I believe my grandfather, her dad was the culprit. Because she has always had this icky, close, but “something not quite right” relationship with him. And I never felt safe with him either. Like, I was never close to him, but I knew I had my mother’s father and then there was my grandmother’s brother who was like my other grandpa and I loved him so much. But my mother’s father, I just, something was just not right about that guy and the fact that my mother lived her life— she lived her life like a woman who had serious daddy issues so it didn’t quite add up that they were supposedly so close. And, you know, she was jealous of all of his wives that he’s had and his wives did not like her. So there was something going on, but she would never say anything bad about him, she would never say anything bad about my grandmother either who abandoned her and my uncle and let my grandfather and his common law wife raise them. And she, you know, she grew up in this era where you weren’t allowed to be resentful or angry with your parents for anything no matter what they did. And she in turn expects that of me. Like, one of the things that’s been a recurring theme is the level of respect I give her. Like, she demands respect. And any issue I bring up throughout my childhood, teen, adult, when I say “mom, why are you doing this?” she would just say “listen to how you’re talking to me, listen, I’m your mother.” And it would just shut me up. So I just stopped saying anything.
PG: Yeah. My mom would do the same thing. She would play the ‘mother’ card. You know they— According to this book that I read about understanding the borderline mother, borderlines, deep down at the core of it is an intense fear of abandonment and that’s why they act the way they do, is they are so terrified of that abandonment being repeated. I think that’s why they are so unable to put themselves in other people’s shoes is because they’re so preoccupied with their own survival because their survival as children really was on the line. You also shared with me in your email that you struggle with sexual issues to this day. Are you comfortable talking about that?
DJ: Um, sure.
PG: Can you talk about the sexual issues that you struggle with?
DJ: Sexual issues, yeah, I guess it would be being sexually compulsive.
PG: And what form does that take?
DJ: Oh, you mean like what exactly do I do?
PG: Yeah.
DJ: Having sex with people I don’t know very well. I just pretty much using sex as medication. I guess you would have to ask something more specific.
PG: What activities are compulsive? Like sleeping around?
DJ: Yeah, just hooking up with people online or… I got into a support group for men when I was— I guess I’ve been in this for about eight years now, but at the time I was in a long term relationship and two years into it I started cheating on him and that’s when I got into a support group for this issue and then I remained monogamous and sober for the remaining six years until I left because I was not happy in the relationship. And I stayed way longer than I should have and so… You know, it was very easy in a relationship to be sexually sober, as we call it, but it’s been a struggle as a single person.
PG: What did it feel like as you built up some sobriety and relief from your compulsive acting out?
DJ: Well, at the time I would say it just gave me the clarity to make a decision about the rela— It gave me the courage and the clarity to leave this unhealthy relationship that I was in, is what it did at that time.
PG: And what— I’m just going to take a wild guess but my hunch is that you were drawn to people that were controlling?
DJ: Oh my god! How did you know?! (laughing) I pretty much married my mom if she were a skinny, hairy jew.
PG: and so you were finally able to see that that was not a good match that you were repeating…
DJ: Yeah, as I got healthier. Like, at the time I met him I thought it was exactly what I wanted. I was living in squalor, in this apartment, I didn’t know how to clean up after myself. And I met this guy who took care of everything, you know? He cooked and cleaned and kept the place immaculate and it came with a price.
PG: ‘I’m doing this for you, we have a covert contract that you must do this for me’
DJ: Kind of, yeah. And it was, yeah, controlling, narcissist. He really was exactly like my mother. So, but then yeah, I can’t believe I stayed as long as I did, but I did and leaving that relationship was one of the best things I ever did for myself. And being single and having these sexual issues, it’s been a struggle but, you know, I still think I’m very better off going to these support groups and I have a really good mentor and I’m dating someone right now who is very healthy for me which is terrifying.
PG: Sure. I’m sure. It’s so unfamiliar.
DJ: It is, but the fact that I want to stick around, I mean that is saying a lot to me about the work that I’ve done on myself. The fact that I’m not running.
PG: That’s amazing Derrick. That’s amazing. Do you ever feel pride at what you’ve been through and the fact that you’re starting to stick up for yourself?
DJ: Oh, of course! All the time. And usually I feel it when I talk to other people that have known me for a long time and have seen my growth. Of course. I’m feeling really optimistic and I’m at a really good place in my life. I still don’t know what’s going on with my mom and how this situation is going to be resolved. I wrote, I spent— for a whole year I didn’t speak to her and I just wrote her letters and that was the riskiest thing I ever did and it really did pay off because our relationship really did change after that. But now, with this last phone call, everything is really in limbo.
PG: Why was the writing of letters risky?
DJ: It was risky for me because I have never been heard her. I’ve never felt that she was interested in me, I’ve never felt that she listened to me and it happened as a result when my mentor in my support group had died and I went to her house on Christmas—no Easter— and he had died just the week before and I was sad and she said “what’s the matter with you?” and I said “somebody that was like a dad to me died.” And she said “oh” and then a few minutes later she said, “You didn’t even send me an Easter card.”
PG: Oh my god.
DJ: and I said “you know what, I gotta go” and I left and then Mother’s Day was right around the corner and I sent her a letter with some money in it—this is her favorite gift, money, like great, perfect. And I said “this is all I can do for you this year because I’m just going through my own stuff” and then she called and got her card with money in it and left me this really nasty message “you didn’t even call your mother on Mother’s Day, I’m really hurt and I haven’t done anything to you.” That’s her favorite thing “I’ve done nothing to you” and that’s when I just say, I just started writing her letters. And I told her— I poured my heart out to her in these letters. I didn’t get into the sexual weirdness, I just told her, you know, I told her I was in a support group, I told her about my own sexual issues, I told her a lot of things that I just had never told her before. And I invited her to write back, which she never did, but then she would periodically call to say something, I don’t remember— she would just call me and just leave a message… Or at the time I was sending her DVDs., I would buy— like she was watching The Sopranos and I would send her a DVD of The Sopranos and she would call and say “Oh, I got The Sopranos, thank you” but then she wouldn’t acknowledge anything I wrote in my letter. But this went on for a whole year and it felt really good to me. And it was risky, because I didn’t really know what the outcome was. Was she ever going to talk to me? Was she ever going to write to me? And then I found out via Facebook that a childhood friend that my mom knew had passed away and I wrote a letter to her telling her that this guy had died and she thanked me for that and we ended up reconnecting at his funeral. And that’s the first time I had seen her in a year and out relationship, you know, picked up from there. And it had been going very well up until the day before Mother’s Day.
PG: How much are you— And maybe this is just me reading how I feel right now— How much are you enjoying the break from her phone calls and talking with her?
DJ: I’m loving it!
PG: I feel the same way.
DJ: I love it. The only thing that bugs me is then the guilt creeps in like “what if she dies or something and the last thing I said to her was fuck you?” but other than that I really like it when she’s not in my life.
PG: And by the way when I kind of cheered for you saying “fuck you” to her it wasn’t really me cheering that you were saying something that hurts you it was me cheering you standing up for yourself.
DJ: Right, I understand. And I appreciate that, in fact I need to hear that from other people. Because I’ve told this story to other people in my life and I’ve had some judgment from people that I’m close to about it. So I…
PG: And that’s why I think support groups are so important. Because you’re going to get input from people that have lived what you’ve lived. And often who have come out the other side with a clarity on it. And they can understand an addiction or compulsive nature and the sickness behind it so much better than somebody who hasn’t lived that, who doesn’t understand the dynamic behind that. While it’s great to have friends to bounce things off of, you know, it’s really important to get professional help and to get help in support groups to get that— because these issues are fucking complicated.
DJ: Yes, they are. Especially when you have a relationship. When it’s the neighbor, or the priest, or the coach it’s not because they’re not in your life anymore but it’s really complicated when it’s your mom.
PG: Yeah, another book that I’m reading that is really helpful is called No More Mr. Nice Guy and it’s about guys that grow up neglecting their own needs and I totally identify with it because one of the things that it says that we do in it is it says then we become controlling and manipulative and passive-aggressive. We learn how to disguise our own needs but we wind up being needy in ways that are really kind of complicated and we can’t even see that that’s what we’re doing; manipulating people. And as hard as that is to admit, it’s also really freeing to be able to get some let shed on how the sickness that was kind of foisted upon us turns into a sickness that we have and that we need to stop. Stop continuing that cycle. And he made a distinction between caretaking and caring and I’m probably going to mangle this but he said that caretaking involves you doing something with the underlying idea, the underlying kind of covert contract that I’m going to do this and you’re going to do that for me. The caretaking, the giving if you want to call it that, comes from a place of emptiness and desperation and caring, you’re doing something for somebody expecting nothing in return and you’re doing it from a place of abundance just because you want to. And that to me, if you can’t see that you’re coming from that place of emptiness, if you can’t see that you’re coming from that place of ‘wink,wink, I know subconsciously this means you’re going to have to listen to this, you’re going to have to put up with this bullshit of mine because I cleaned the house’ or whatever it is. We never get to see the clarity of why we’re doing the things that we do and it allows us sometimes, if we’re that caretaker, to continue doing what we’re doing and believe that we’re the victim in doing it.
DJ: Right
PG: And there was a third thing to it that I can’t remember what is right now but it really struck me because I thing the biggest mistake that people can make when they’ve lived with an abusive parent is to no want to go that extra deep level of saying “what is the sickness that I know have and how can I stop foisting that on other people?” and it’s not easy.
DJ: No, it’s not.
PG: It’s not. Do you feel like doing a fear off?
DJ: Sure
PG: Was there anything else that you wanted to talk about or mention?
DJ: Well you talk about what are some elements in my life and the whole issue of never having known my dad has been really hard for me.
PG: Yeah, can you talk about that?
DJ: Sure. Well the way that my mom tells the story, and I have no reason to doubt her, she was— she had kind of run away from home but she wasn’t a minor, she was 20 or whatever and she was traveling door to door selling magazine subscriptions. Supposedly to get money for college. With this company that gets runaway kids and they put them on a bus and take them all around the country doing that and that’s where she met my dad and they had an affair on the road and she became pregnant with me and when she found out she was pregnant she told him and he wanted to marry her and she lied to him and told him it wasn’t his baby and he said “I know you’re lying” and that was it. So my grandmother wired her some money to come home and when she got home she felt bad and she wrote this man a letter telling him the truth at the last location they were at and the letter was returned to her. And that’s the story of how I came to be born.
PG: And she never got a hold of him or never tried again to get a hold of him?
DJ: She didn’t know how to get a hold of him. He had a very common name, I’ll say his name, Bill Jackson, it’s a very common name and he’s from Dallas, Texas. But that’s the story of how I was conceived and so I’ve done everything I could possibly do with such limited information to find him. But it’s been, in addition to all the weird sexual stuff, this has been one of the biggest sources of resentment I’ve had.
PG: Towards him or towards your mom?
DJ: No, towards her. Because kind of the way we were talking before about how she doesn’t really see how anything affects me. This is another thing she just doesn’t think it’s a big deal.
PG: really?
DJ: Yeah, and it’s been a big deal to me. I mean I feel like I’ve been looking for my father my whole life. Usually through sex with older men, you know. So, that was one of the seminal moments of my life.
PG: That must be incredibly hurtful. To have been denied a relationship with one of your parents because of the whim of another parent.
DJ: Exactly. It’s kind of— I have no reason to doubt the story because she doesn’t come out looking very good in it. And there’s no reason why she would lie to make herself look bad! I understand— I don’t know, parents do the best they can with the tools they have d I do believe that. Yeah, it’s been— that part of it has been very, very hurtful to me.
PG: On some level I suppose it must be nice to know that your dad did actually care about you and he didn’t do what a lot of dads do which is go ‘yeah, I knew the kid a little bit and I still decided to leave’ which is its own kind of rejection and pain.
DJ: It’s sort of a double edged sword though because that part of it makes me more resentful to her whereas if he’d been the one that bailed I’d probably be more sympathetic towards her.
PG: Yeah, but then the resentment would be towards him.
DJ: Towards him, but since I’ve never met him it’s not the same kind of resentment as someone—
PG: And I think that’s where people get off a little bit. The person who abandons the young kid doesn’t really get as much of the resentment as they should because they’ve certainly shirked their duties but they’re not around to get on that kid’s nerves and do all the other stuff like, I imagine I probably have some more anger for my dad, even though he didn’t leave us physically, he left us in terms of being interested in us, being emotionally present for us. Being a buffer between my mom and I! You know, just the other week I got so angry thinking about how my mom would sexualize me and I just thought how the fuck did my dad just sit there and watch my mom paw me and not say something? Not only that, but how did he let her browbeat him into not being physically affectionate with me? Because she said— she told him not to do that with me when I was 10 because she thought he was going to molest me. So I get robbed of that affection from my dad because of my mom projecting this shit on to him. But how does he let that happen?
DJ: Do you think she was jealous?
PG: I don’t know…
DJ: Like she wanted to be the one giving you the affection and not him?
PG: I don’t know. She could probably see that I enjoyed it and didn’t get shut down like I did with her. I don’t know. Who knows? Who knows? But I guess my point is I don’t want this episode to come across as misogynistic and that this is something women do. It’s not, it just happens to be in your and my case, our mothers. It’s absolutely something happening between daughters and fathers and parents of the same sex as their kids. So, I just wanted to make that point. Let’s do the fear off.
DJ: ok.
PG: You want to start?
DJ: Sure. I’m afraid of authority figures.
PG: I’m going to be reading the fears of a listener named Andrew. He writes “I’m afraid I’ve let the relationship with my sister deteriorate over time. Because I haven’t reached out to her enough”.
DJ: I’m afraid that I’ll meet some great guy who thinks I’m a great guy but dumps me because I don’t have the courage to find out who I’m supposed to be.
PG: Oh wow, that’s deep. Andrew says “I’m afraid that I’ll never be in as good a physical shape as I am today. That each day I’ll deteriorate more and more, losing hair in places I want hair and gaining hair in places I don’t want it.” That’s awesome.
DJ: I’m afraid my mother will die and I’ll take her death harder than I ever imagined.
PG: Oh boy, do I have that one. Andrew writes “I’m afraid that I will never be able to overcome the jealousy I have of others and be able to genuinely celebrate their successes.”
DJ: I’m afraid my mother will die and I won’t be sad at all.
PG: I also relate to that one. I’m now gonna pick up with some fears from a listener named Kate. She writes, “I’m afraid of men.”
DJ: I’m afraid I’ll cause a fatal car accident.
PG: “I’m afraid my fiancé will become a quadriplegic and not even I will be able to make him happy in the face of it”.
DJ: Wow. I’m afraid my roommate will kick me out and the only place I’ll be able to afford will be a shitty apartment in a shitty neighborhood.
PG: “I’m afraid I’ll be misunderstood.”
DJ: I’m afraid I’ll die alone and broke.
PG: “I’m afraid of grey hair.”
DJ: I’m afraid of intimacy with women.
PG: “I’m afraid of my teeth falling out.”
DJ: I’m afraid that I’ve been so promiscuous these last three years of being single that I won’t be able to be monogamous even if I meet the man of my dreams.
PG: Kate writes, “I’m afraid my fiancé will stop loving me.”
DJ: I’m afraid of someone listening to me poop.
PG: Ha, that’s interesting, her next one is “I’m afraid that other people can smell my frequent flatulence and I don’t know how bad it is.”
DJ: I’m afraid my preoccupation with the physical imperfections of people I date makes me shallow.
PG: “I’m afraid my fiancé will love me more than I love him and I will stay because I don’t want to hurt him.”
DJ: I’m afraid my sexual compulsion will keep me from ever accomplishing any of my goals.
PG: “I’m afraid of having children because they will eat up all my time and I will resent them.
DJ: I’m afraid that no matter how great my partner is I’ll always think there’s someone better out there for me.
PG: “I’m afraid of becoming a smothering parent”
DJ: I’m afraid that I will lose my job and have nothing to fall back on and become homeless and it will be all my fault for not planning for my future.
PG: Oh, that’s a good one. Kate says “I’m afraid of becoming distant and pathetic in my relationships exactly like my father.”
DJ: I’m afraid that when I meet new people they can immediately see that I’m not comfortable in my own skin.
PG: “I’m afraid of overcommitting and becoming trapped in the wrong friendships because I am a people pleaser.”
DJ: I’m afraid I don’t know how to articulate my thoughts.
PG: “I’m afraid of people looking at me.”
DJ: I’m afraid of doing partner work in yoga class.
PG: “I’m afraid I will die with my song unsung.” Oh, that’s a deep one.
DJ: I’m afraid of being judged by black people for not being black enough or for my relationship with my mother.”
PG: That’s a great one. “I’m afraid I will become fat.”
DJ: I’m afraid of being judged by your listeners when you air this podcast.
PG: “I’m afraid I will get diabetes.”
DJ: I’m afraid god is thoroughly disappointed in me.
PG: “I’m afraid I am holding my fiancé back from the life he really wants.”
DJ: I’m afraid of going to a party full of educated professionals with interesting jobs and telling them I’m a mailman.
PG: “I’m afraid of always being seen as the good girl.”
DJ: I’m afraid of saying anything at a dinner party when the conversation turns political because my politics are right of center.
PG: “I’m afraid of being called a slut.”
DJ: And, that’s about all I have.
PG: Awesome. Let’s jump into the love off. You want to start?
DJ: I started last time, why don’t you start?
PG: Ok. Good for you! Look at you sticking up for yourself! I’m going to be doing a listener’s loves and these were from Facebook. Rich Galvin says “I love it when you go to watch something on TV at random and the show you find was the one you’d been thinking about but couldn’t quite remember until you saw it again.”
DJ: Oh, that’s great. I love going to the movies alone and being able to laugh or cry in solitude.
PG: Yana Idlestein writes “I love using all my tiles in scrabble.” I relate to that one.
DJ: I love writing in my journal.
PG: Mo Higgles writes “I love the ice cold margarita I’m currently drinking on this hot Texas day.”
DJ: I love when a friend says “I love you”.
PG: Sharon Penny writes “I love the little girl in her daddy’s arms in front of me at the grocery store who exclaimed ‘that makes me happy daddy!’” That’s so sweet.
DJ: Aw, that’s sweet. And I so have daddy issues so I relate. I love when a dog is barking at me through a fence and I take a risk and stick my hand out and he licks me.
PG: Oh wow! That’s ballsy for a mail carrier! Ellen Totelayman (sp?), I love Ellen, writes “I love when you say something cuckoo and everyone knows you’re just cuckoo.”
DJ: I love flirting with my male and female coworkers.
PG: Allison Manoa (sp?) says “I love it when my cat headbutts me, I don’t love it when her butt is against my head.”
DJ: I love 80’s Christian rock.
PG: Melissa says “I love it when you hit a streak of all your favorite songs on the radio while driving.”
DJ: Oh wow, that never happens to me. I love the Oscars.
PG: Brian Perkins writes “I love it when you know the answer on Jeopardy but the contestant doesn’t.” That’s a great one.
DJ: I love taking photographs of my friends.
PG: Jennifer Lycano writes, and I love Jennifer, she’s our head transcriber, writes “I love when I can spend the whole day in sweatpants and don’t have to put real people clothes on.”
DJ: I love when yoga teachers swear.
PG: That’s great. Jennifer Lycano says “I love saving all the marshmallows in Lucky Charms to eat at the end.”
DJ: I love having a genuine, non-sexual connection with another man.
PG: Tiffany Gustofson says “I love all of us know what a ‘love off’ is, it feels like a secret club.” Of course, I love that one.
DJ: I love my body.
PG: Logan Swanson writes “I love how my girlfriend is the perfect audience member to any movie that I show her. Not only does she gasp and laugh at the right points, but she’s more invested in the story than I am when it’s over.” That’s a great one.
DJ: I love a 90 minute massage.
PG: Lydia Lacy, I love Lydia, writes “I love eating wintergreen lifesavers and chomping down on one that mushes instead of crunches.” That’s such a great one.
DJ: I love having the courage to flirt with someone way out of my league and getting a positive response.
PG: Allison Manoa writes “I love getting an onion ring or a curly fry when I order regular fries.”
DJ: Oh, I love that one too! And I get jealous when I’m with friends and they got an onion ring and I didn’t. I love all the attention I get from being the only openly gay person in a blue collar job.
PG: Val Losenangle writes “I love even when I’m only gone for a half hour my dog greets me like I was gone for weeks.”
DJ: I love when a black woman checks me out.
PG: Val Losenangle writes “I love it when my husband makes a big weekend meal and I get to be his sous chef.”
DJ: I love melancholy Christmas music.
PG: Ronnie Shilder-Johnson, I love Ronnie, writes “I love it when my dog comes to me when I simply beckon my hand.”
DJ: I love when a stranger makes small talk with me and I don’t freak out and am able to reciprocate.”
PG: Susan Beall says “I love when I feel like shit and can’t figure out why and I try all sorts of things to feel better and then something like Paul Gilmartin starting a ‘love off’ has got me smiling and liking all over the place before I even know what happened. Concise version, I love when good feelings take me by surprise.” Thank you Susan.
DJ: And I’m out of loves.
PG: Well Derrick, I loved talking to you and I loved hearing somebody’s story that reminded me that what I’ve gone through is not unique and what I feel doesn’t make me a freak and that it can get better.
DJ: Thank you. I feel the exact same way about you and about hearing your story and just this experience has been pretty cathartic for me so I appreciate it.
PG: Alright, back atcha. Many thanks to Derrick Jackson for a great conversation and certainly making me feel less alone and fucked up about my issues. Before we take it out with a survey I want to remind you guys that there’s a couple different ways that you can support the show, you can support— Oh! I want to thank the people that make this show possible. The people that collect the audio, Debbie, Megan, Tim, Zack, and Gary and it’s headed up by Matt, thank you Matt. And the transcribers, headed up by Jennifer, includes Angela and Angela, the great 80’s duo, Kristen, Shaun, Hannah, Juany, Sherry, Myrh, Nate, Wendy Amy, Alexis and Lindsey. And the guys who help patrol the boards, keep the spammers out, John, Michael, Manny, and Dan, thank you guys so much. And Stee Greeve who runs the website, thank you so much Stee. Ah, you can support the show financially by going to the website mentalpod.com and making a donation either a one time or a monthly recurring which makes me extremely happy. You can also buy stuff on Amazon by using our search link, they give us a couple nickels, it doesn’t cost you anything. You can get a tshirt on our website. And you can support the show non financially by giving us a good rating on iTunes it helps boost our ranking and brings more people to the show and you can support it just by spreading the word, Reddit, Tumblr, whatever social media you can, that really helps. So, I appreciate that. I’m going to take it out with a survey, this was filled out by a woman in her 20’s, she calls herself American Idiot. You can tell right out of the gate the self esteem is going to be brimming. I am probably related to her. She is in her 20’s, she was raised in an environment that was pretty dysfunctional, she writes, “an alcoholic mother that was full of rage, she pretty much hated us. Father was a pothead and pot dealer. Parents divorced when I was 9 which led to a long, bitter custody battle.” Really, that’s what children are best utilized for is the long, bitter custody battle. They make such perfect pawns. Ever been the victim of sexual abuse? She says “no”. Deepest, darkest thoughts, she writes “I think about running away from life a lot lately. Just abandoning my responsibilities and starting a new life somewhere else. I used to think a lot about hurting other people, like going into a public place with a bomb, but that was before 9-11 and now I realize just how fucked up it was to do something like that. Not that I would have done it before anyway, but I just like to think about it. I think that I find enjoyment in seducing men, making them fall for me, having power over them just so I can hurt them. I always say how afraid I am of hurting men but then I seem to make them fall in love with me because I try so hard to be liked by everyone even though I don’t want to be with those men at all.” What sexual fantasies are most powerful to you? She writes, “I like thinking about being tied up, gang banged, having multiple men come on me simultaneously while I’m forced to just lay there and take it. Lately I’ve started thinking about being with another woman, although I’ve never acted on it. I found a couple of women attractive.” Would you ever consider telling a partner or close friend your fantasies? She writes, “I’ve tried talking about it before, but talking about sex makes me uncomfortable and shameful and I just get the giggles and change the topic.” Deepest, darkest secrets, she writes “there are so many. One time I accidentally broke a mercury thermometer when I lived with my alcoholic, abusive mom and I was afraid of getting hit for it so I quickly cleaned it up and put it in a plastic jug that my mom used as an ice pack. I think she used it to drink water from too, but I never told her because I was too ashamed. My dad used to pee while I was taking a shower when I was in my early teens and I would peek at him because I was curious about what a penis should look like. I used to tie my own arm to my bed and masturbate with the other while my sister slept in her bed in the same room. There are so many more but I am already so ashamed now I don’t even want to send this.” Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feeling towards yourself? She writes “I feel like a despicable human being who doesn’t understand how to be normal, who does things just for attention, only to push them away. I feel sick and ashamed about my sexuality which is why I almost never orgasm, especially when there’s another person around.” I just want to give this person a big hug, because, oh my god, you describe exactly how I felt in my 20’s. It’s going to change, hang in there, it’s going to change. You’re not a bad person, you’re not a broken person. You’re not— I guess I can never say it enough but it just constantly amazes me how hard people are on themselves. I guess when it’s our own stuff we think it’s — you know one of the reasons why I think sexual fantasies cause us so much shame, you know, it’s easy for somebody to tell you— you say, I think about such and such and it’s easy for the other person to say “you shouldn’t feel ashamed about that”, but I think the reason why it feels so shameful to us is that we know all the nitty, gritty details about it and the fact that there are nitty, gritty details to that fantasy makes us feel like we’re bad because energy was spent in creating that but we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t. We should go easy on ourselves. Our actions are what are important and if your actions aren’t hurting anybody, what’s the big deal? I’m going to end it with a couple of good things about living with depression. This is a thread I’ve started on Twitter. Dr. Scientifical says the good thing about depression: you’ll never be one of those fake people who glad hand their way to success. Secret Refuge says the good thing about depression: the Sun never gets in your eyes. And my favorite. The good thing about depression: it gives you something in common with the parent that caused it. Thank you guys so much for contributing to the show and thanks for listening and if you’re out there listening and you’re feeling stuck, aw man, you’re not alone, you’re so not alone. There’s so many of us out there, and the emails that I get every day make me feel less alone and I think we’re building a nice little community with this show and it makes me really, really happy. So thanks for listening.
Jeremy Thompson
04/19/2022 at 2:36 pmMy mom has a mental illness and she believes she is seeing bugs and parasites and she is not she is annoying me with her bug and parasite nonsense. Would like her to make an appointment to see a therapist and for her to stop talking to me and stay out of my room .